Killer Color
We've known about a batch of hot new printers coming from Epson since we first saw them at a private showing in Jan.1998, but one of those nasty non-disclosure agreements kept us from blabbing about them. Now that the units have been officially released in North America, we can finally tell you about them. In a word, they're hot. The photo quality on the (very expensive) glossy photo paper is simply amazing, but even on less expensive coated stock, the print quality exceeds that of any other units we've seen. In fact, Canadian Computer Wholesaler magazine awarded the Photo 700 its Innovation '98 Award for technical excellence at Comdex Canada, in July 1998.
The new Epson Stylus Photo 700 (US$279) and Epson Stylus Photo EX, (US$499) printers arrived on store shelves at the end of April in North America.
Another model, known as the Stylus Photo 850, was also released in April. As so often happens when new models hit the scene, Epson dropped the price of its previous top-of-the-line consumer model, the Stylus Color 800, to US$299.
Both new models feature six-color inks for excellent photo reproduction. The EX model is capable of printing pages up to A3 (tabloid) size. The 700 features a Digital PhotoLab software bundle (PhotoDeluxe v2.0, Extensis Portfolio and Epson's Photo Sheet) and new print driver enhancements, including N-Up printing functionality and the ability to use watermark. The EX model includes Adobe Photoshop v4.0 LE; Extensis Portfolio and Spin Panorama, a stitching program for creating panoramic photographs.
As the Epson web site notes, the new units support genuine Adobe PostScript via an optional software-based interpreter. We recommend adding this PostScript software if you plan on using this printer for desktop-publishing or illustration work.
Lexmark Strikes Back
Not to be outdone, Lexmark has introduced its Lexmark 3200 Color JetPrinter, a C$279 model that provides color output at a stunning 1200x1200 resolution. The 3200 boasts laser-quality, waterproof text and print speeds up to 6 pages per minute in black and 2.5 ppm in color. An optional six-color cartridge provides photographic-quality prints with realistic skin tones and dots that were small enough to be practically indiscernible. We detected no banding whatsoever in gorgeous print samples from this unit. It doesn't get much better than this.
Also new is the Lexmark 1100 Color JetPrinter, a 600x600-dpi model at the rock-bottom price of C$169. It prints at speeds of up to 3.5 ppm in black and 1.5 ppm in color. At this bargain price, hopefully you won't be too disappointed to know that dots are plainly visible in the printouts it produces -- this unit isn't the best choice for those wanting to print photos.
Business users looking for a network-ready color printer should take a close look at Lexmark's Optra series, released June 15. The new printers include the Optra Color 40 (C$695), a networkable 600-dpi unit with standard PostScript Level 2 and print speeds up to 4 ppm. Above it, the Optra Color 45 (C$1,389) delivers 1200-dpi print on pages up to 11x17. It, too offers PostScript Level 2. The Optra 45 has options for flash memory and expansion up to 72MB RAM. The unit prints pages at speeds up to 8ppm monochrome, or 4 ppm color.
Finally, the Optra Color 1200 is a high-end ($9,450) wide-format color page printer that uses LED (laser-like) technology to deliver lower costs per page and speeds up to 12 ppm in both color and monochrome on pages up to 11x17, on a wide variety of media (labels, transparencies, envelopes, etc.). The time to print the first page is impressive, too: a mere 22 seconds. The unit's four paper trays handle up to 850 pages at a time from four input sources. As with other laser/LED printers we've seen, color image quality is slightly lower than that of a good inkjet unit -- but not too shabby, by any means. PostScript Level 2 and PCL 5c are supported.
The new printers were developed at the company's Lexington, KY development facility.
Also, HP has just announced its C$1,149 HP 2000C Professional Series color printer, described in a press release at http://hp2000C.com. As with other recent HP units we've seen, slight banding was visible in its printouts.
High-end Color
And, if consumer-level color isn't enough, Epson has a high-end solution that pits it squarely against the big players in the color-proofing market. The Epson Stylus Pro 5000 takes the company's growing color prowess to new levels. It offers amazing print quality, but it clearly targeted at pros with its US$10,000 price tag. A version with a separate server, known as the 5000 Proofer was shown at the recent Seybold publishing conference. The server adds another $10,000 to the cost, but competes with high-end proofing devices that cost much more, both in initial cost and price-per-page.
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